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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • I’m half hispanic/white. I grew up with my Mexican family and spent most summers in Mexico visiting family. I’m fluent in spanish and mostly identify culturally with my Mexican side. But my dad was a very white guy from northeast Texas, so I look very white.

    While in college, I found myself serving and eventually bartending at a popular Colombian restaurant/club. I got called a lot of nasty things by Latino folks who assumed I was appropriating their culture or thought I was mocking them. I’ve also had Latino folks talk shit about me in spanish in front of me - assuming I didn’t understand.

    I often find myself playing it down or pretending I don’t know spanish so as not to upset people. It has to be a conscious decision because it’s very different from how I talk with my family.

    Wish I had some cool, “I showed them” story, but I was always frustrated and hurt in those situations. It’s like all of my upbringing, experiences, and familial relationships didn’t matter because I don’t look like them.

    **I’d just like to add that for as many rude Latino people I’ve met, I’ve met 4x as many wonderful Latino people.





  • Thank you for sharing a little about your own journey with your wife. I’m really happy to hear that y’all are in a better place now. I feel like too often, I hear about the couples that didn’t make it through something like this. Things like this certainly put a huge strain on a marriage, and many times it’s going to be what makes or breaks a couple.

    I hope my husband and I are able to come out of this stronger as individuals and as a couple - like you and your wife. I think we’re definitely headed in the right direction.

    Cheers!


  • They actually are. I tried talking to my husband about a lot of the suggestions I was given in this thread, but he wasn’t very receptive to really any of it. I’m trying to keep in mind that he comes from a background where being depressed and struggling emotionally is considered mental weakness. Not to mention, I feel like it’s really hard to accept you need help (or even feel like you can be helped) when you’re extremely depressed. But I said my piece, and he at least listened to everything I had to say before turning it all down. In the past, he would have cut me off to turn me down.

    Maybe doesn’t sound too optimistic lol, but when I saw him shut down those advances, I tried one of the other suggested approaches where I made plans for things that I know he loves. We go bouldering together and we love it, but had kinda dropped off due to depression on both our ends, but I started getting that routine going again. He had also mentioned that one thing he was struggling with was understanding what he was working towards, because he couldn’t see any clear goal in mind. He just feels like he’s going through the motions without actually moving or progressing anywhere. We used to always do projects, but again, that had kinda dropped off due to depression and just life being busy. So I took the initiative to start a “Life List” outlining the projects we need to do, want to do, and just other fun things we’ve been wanting to do. Goal was to get the ball rolling so that we could both build this list together, prioritize, then essentially plan it out on a calendar to create realistic objectives.

    I’ve never been good at planning - I’m more of an “on the fly” type person, but I see that he needs help getting going with this, because this is important to him.

    Anyways, all of these gestures seem to have helped pull him out of the deep darkness, and he’s starting to feel more like himself again.

    I know that the goal isn’t to get back to exactly where we were, but I feel like things are a little bit better in the sense that he’s been opening up to me a little more. Sharing more about his feelings, and more importantly, being honest about them. It’s a huge step in the right direction, because he in general seems more comfortable with addressing his feelings. Hopeful that in the future, he’ll be finally willing to open up to a professional that can help him work through his deep-seated trauma. Especially hope that he has the confidence and knowledge that I’ll be by his side the whole way (not literally, of course).

    Sorry for the ramble. Means a lot that even though you don’t know me, you had the thought to check in. You and everyone else in this thread have been truly amazing. We’re not making leaps and bounds here, but any progress is good progress. :-)


  • My dad was a wonderful man with a great heart, but I think in this conversation, it’s more productive to speak of his downfalls. He died when I was 15, and I was very close to him until then. He was so often smiling, and giving, and generous, and caring to everyone and anyone he met. But one of the most impactful things I remember is that he was severely depressed in the last 5 years of his life. As a child, I didn’t know what to do about it. Shit, as an adult, I wouldn’t know what to do.

    If you feel depression creeping up, for the sake of your daughter - for the sake of your family - get help.

    I miss my dad so much, and I hate that the dominating memories I have of him are when he was max depressed, or when he was in a coma.



  • I was diagnosed with Celiac disease about 15 years ago - had the endoscopy and then a couple of years later, had the blood marker test to verify. My reactions to eating gluten have not been consistent, and I don’t know what to make of it. More often than not, I get the diarrhea and bloating. Sometimes I get the nausea, but only once have I thrown up from eating gluten. Sometimes I get nothing at all (not as common, but it happens).

    Then there was a period of about 1.5 years where I’d get random swelling in my face (usually in my eyes and lips), and hives. My sinus cavities would often get very swollen and irritated, too. But that suddenly stopped, and is no longer a symptom.

    Been to a few different gastroenterologists over the years, and went to an allergy doctor when I was having all the facial swellings. Nobody was able to explain why I have such inconsistent reactions, but they are confident I have Celiac disease.


  • He has changed, but so have I. Been together for 7.5 years and married for 3.5. We both came into this relationship with a lot of emotional baggage, and 2 months after he proposed to me, my brother drowned to death during a rafting accident we were both part of. My husband and other brother almost died that day, but I was able to pick up my other brother in my raft and flag down help in time for my husband and us. It could’ve been a lot worse. But we still lost my older brother whom we were all 3 very close with. He was going to be the best man at our wedding. We didn’t find his body right away. We spent the next 2.5 days after the accident searching for his dead body on foot along the coast of the lake, until his body finally floated up to the top of the lake - not 20 ft from where i had picked up my other brother. My husband couldn’t help because of a severe viral infection he was fighting for having swallowed too much lake water while trying to survive.

    This was extremely hard to deal with and process for a lot of reasons, and we almost didn’t make it as a couple. I could feel the shift after several months. Took me that long because it was all too much for me to handle. By then, we both had said and done a lot of hurtful things in our grief.

    As a couple, we have not historically communicated well emotionally (because of individual emotional baggage + collective trauma). However, we have come a long way, and are significantly better today. But we still have a ways to go.

    One of the big struggles is that he doesn’t have other people that he trusts like that, so he just doesn’t open up unless it’s with me, and he certainly doesn’t always open up with me. It’s not my preference that he only opens up to me, but it’s a product of a few factors, and I know he’s not happy about it either. Just not sure what to do about it.